The company will begin shipping sample cards in November to OEM manufacturers

SD memory cards capable of reading and writing data at speeds faster than current cards should be available in less than a year, Toshiba said on Tuesday.

The company, which is one of the leading backers of the SD card format, said it plans to ship sample cards based on version 3.0 of the SD Memory Standard to OEM manufacturers in November this year. The cards should arrive on retail shelves in the first half of 2010.

Version 3.0 of the standard was announced in January this year and calls for data transfer speeds of up to 104MB per second on the SD interface. The speed with which data can flow to and from the card is becoming more important as the cards gain greater storage capacity and are used for large files such as high-definition video clips.

The Toshiba cards will include 16GB and 32GB SDHC models and a 64GB card based on the new SDXC specification. The -XC specification takes over where -HC ends and will be used for cards between 64GB and, eventually, 2TB.

The SD standard calls for the cards to be based on Microsoft's exFAT file system although it may be possible to use other file systems on the cards for greater compatibility.